Four fun facts

Emily Behny as Belle and Dane Agostinis as Beast in "Beauty and the… (Joan Marcus )

November 11, 2011|By Rod Stafford Hagwood, Staff writer

Here are four things you may not have known about this refurbished tour of "Disney's Beauty and the Beast."

The hiatus upgrades

This national tour started in February 2010, but the company has been on hiatus for six weeks.

"The show just picked up again for this leg," choreographer Matt West said. "And in that time, the NETworks Presentations producers have been great. They re-did the costumes, they re-painted the sets, and we even have a new rose (for the uninitiated, the rose is used as an hourglass and the Beast must break the spell before the last petal falls).

"So you guys in Fort Lauderdale are really getting a new show."

The set & size

"The set is now kind of like a big fleur-de-lis, a floral pattern that hints at architecture, so it's much more fantasy," scenic designer Stanley A. Meyer said. "I think in the 21st century, theater's salvation is not to be so literal. Give the audience a chance to use their imaginations."

West said he took advantage of having so much more room.

"I used to have the whole Gaston scene indoors because that was all the room I had. Now I can start that number outside and have him go inside the pub, and then the pub turns around and the audience can see it expand," he said. "I can fit more people in that number. The scenery dances now. Believe me, I went with it."

West put it succinctly: "This show has the flavor of the original, but it's just better."

Costumer Ann Hould-Ward made some adjustments to the "Be Our Guest" number.

"Every one comes out as plates, everyone comes out as flatware. They can go off and change really quickly and come back on. So the number just looks better," she said. "On the road, we'd read these articles saying how we increased the size of the cast. We didn't."

The Leah Factor

"We had this thing we called 'The Leah Factor,'" Meyer said. "That's where the costumer's daughter, Leah, had to approve everything. She would say, 'Oh no, Mommy, Belle's ballgown has to be yellow. It can be gold, but it can't be pink."

Hould-Ward said her daughter, Leah, was 5 in 1993 when she was drawing the show's original outfits.

"And when I came back to [Beauty and the Beast], she was 23," said Hould-Ward, who won a Tony for her work in the original show. "This time around, my [son's kids] were there. So in a funny way, 'The Leah Factor' still does exist.

"What that is really about is that families have grown up with the film and they have certain expectations. Gaston has that red shirt and Belle has to wear a yellow dress at the ball."

The global view

Professional tours of "Beauty and the Beast" have played in 21 countries and 115 cities around the world (there's a junior version for middle- and high-schoolers). Producers say more than 35 million people have seen the show.

"Some of the jokes and puns don't translate into some languages, but the emotion does," Roth said. "Everyone has felt like the Beast. Everyone has wanted to stand out like Belle. These folk tales speak to human truths."